Frequently asked questions about NodePing's server monitoring services

What's a NodePing?

It is an admittedly geeky name, but hey we're geeks. The term "node" can have several meanings. The one we are meaning is generically "something on a distributed network or in the cloud." In other words, the device your site or service is running on. A ping is a networking utility used to test the reachability of something on a network. Actually, the point of NodePing is monitoring services, not devices, and HTTP checks are more common than PING checks, but we didn't think "Lots of HTTP checks and some other stuff" had the same ring to it.

What do you mean by 200 monitors/checks?

Each service that you configure to be monitored is a check. So it could be a web site, or an SMTP server, or an FTP server, or any of the other check types that we provide. The interval of the monitoring doesn't matter. The count is based on the peak number of checks you have enabled concurrently during the month. By the way, you are not limited to the number of checks included in your plan. You can add any number of checks to any plan. You will be charged for any additional checks you add based on the pricing on our pricing page.

Do you support IPv6?

Yes... well, mostly. Our RBL and SIP checks do not support IPv6 but all other check types do.

What types of notifications do you send and how much does it cost?

We support email, international SMS, voice, Pushover mobile push for iOS and Android, PagerDuty API, HipChat, Slack, and webhook notifications (which support Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, etc). Most services charge extra for more SMS or voice notifications, but we think this unduly complicates account management for most people. A monitoring service should just work, and shouldn't require you to keep track of how many notification or SMS points you have. If a plan includes a notification type (see our pricing page), it includes unlimited notifications of that type.

For SMS and voice notifications you may still have charges from your mobile carrier (we can't control that). However, we won't charge you extra for more notifications. If you have trouble receiving our SMS or voice notifications please let us know and we'll work to sort it out. There are a few places where we just can't reliably get notifications delivered, and we'll let you know if that applies to your location, but those are rare.

How many users/contacts do I get with my account?

Unlimited users (mult-user) logins and notification contacts on each account allow you to have as many people as you want help you with monitoring and notifications. It's all included in all of our plans so add as many as you need.

What services or protocols do you check?

We monitor many services or protocols, in addition to basic web page checks. You can find the full list of check types here.

If you have a need for a specific type of check not listed, please drop us a line.

Do you run checks from multiple locations?

Yes and no. Your check will run from a single probe but when it fails there we immediately and automatically recheck from other locations to confirm the result before sending out up or down notifications. You have the choice of which regions you want each check to run from and how many other probes should verify before we send notifications.

If you'd like to specify which of our probes you'd prefer your check to run from, you can use our home location feature.

We also offer a roaming option that will run your check from a new probe every time the check is run.

Do you have a list of IP addresses for your probe locations?

Current probe locations are listed below. They are also listed in this handy text file and can be accessed via DNS query to probes.nodeping.com for automating your firewall rules if needed. A DNS query can also be done per region. nam.probes.nodeping.com for the North America Region, eur.probes.nodeping.com for the European Region, eao.probes.nodeping.com for the East Asia/Oceania Region, and lam.probes.nodeping.com for the Latin America Region.

Probe server status

North American Region

  • Phoenix, Arizona (AZ) - USA (136.175.8.15 / 2605:8340:0:1::2)
  • Los Angeles, California (CA) - USA (104.247.192.170 / 2607:3f00:11:21::10)
  • Seattle, Washington (WA) - USA (107.161.26.107 / 2604:180:1:6e::83b5)
  • Denver, Colorado (CO) - USA (173.248.161.42 / 2607:fc88:100:40::2)
  • Dallas, Texas (TX) - USA (38.114.122.106 / 2604:86c0:4001:2::2)
  • Chicago, Illinois (IL) - USA (209.212.145.34 / 2001:1850:1:3:500::22)
  • Columbus, Ohio (OH) - USA (64.79.76.50 / 2001:1828:0:f6::2)
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PY) - USA (208.82.130.170 /2604:bf00:214::10)
  • Newark, New Jersey (NJ) - USA (209.205.207.243 / 2a06:8640:198::2)
  • New York City, New York (NY) - USA (169.197.141.113 / 2604:86c0:3001:10::2)
  • Toronto, Ontario (OT) - CA (172.105.6.187 / 2600:3c04::f03c:92ff:fe9b:dd03)
  • Ashburn, Virginia (VA) - USA (172.82.138.70 / 2607:3f00:1:a::10)
  • Miami, Florida (FL) - USA (162.254.202.35 / 2604:bc80:8001:3c:225:90ff:fee5:5c6)

European Region

  • London, England (LD) - GB (5.226.139.158 / 2a01:4020:1:26::10)
  • Coventry, England (UK) (78.110.173.218 / 2a01:a500:2604:10::10)
  • Paris, France (FR) - FR (163.172.52.132 / 2001:bc8:2327:101::10)
  • Amsterdam, Netherlands (NL) - NL (37.252.125.64 / 2a02:2770:5:0:21a:4aff:fe1a:c131)
  • Frankfurt, Germany (DE) - DE (54.36.110.96 / 2001:41d0:700:1360::10)
  • Warsaw, Poland (PL) - PL (217.182.201.227 / 2001:41d0:602:4e3::10)
  • Helsinki, Finland (FI) - FI (95.216.64.250 / 2a01:4f9:2b:105::2)
  • Zurich, Switzerland (CH) - CH (23.166.88.115 / 2604:86c0:f401:3::2)

East Asia/Oceania Region

  • Sydney, Australia (AU) - AU (112.213.38.162 / 2404:9400:2:0:216:3eff:fee1:bce0)
  • Melbourne, Australia (AM) - AU (144.48.37.241 / 2404:f780:2:950:216:3cff:feb8:ab8e)
  • Perth, Australia (PE) - AU (203.29.240.44 / 2404:9400:4:0:216:3eff:fee1:3c1b)
  • Singapore (SG) - SG (172.104.181.238 /2400:8901::f03c:91ff:feb9:fbf4)
  • Hong Kong (HK) - CN (103.6.85.58 / 2403:2500:8000:1::ce6)
  • Tokyo, Japan (JP) - JP (180.149.230.17 / 2406:d500:9::7a91:9b75)
  • Auckland, New Zealand (NZ) - NZ (163.47.21.47 / 2406:d500:5::9d4e:fd08)

Latin America Region

  • Federal, Argentina (AR) - AR (190.210.176.200 / 2803:29a0:ffff:ffff:cd1::2)
  • Sao Paulo, Brazil (BR) - BR (148.163.220.117 / 2607:f740:1::c85)
  • Miami, Florida USA (FL) - US (162.254.202.35 / 2604:bc80:8001:3c:225:90ff:fee5:5c6) - We do understand Miami is in North America. Significant traffic between Central and South America goes through Miami and we wanted to ensure that was covered for our customers.

What kinds of payment methods do you accept?

We accept PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, JCB, Discover, Diners Club and American Express. We charge the subscription fee to your credit card automatically on a monthly basis. Please use the links in the billing section of your account to set up payment information. We can also set you up to pay for six months or a year at a time if you would prefer (contact us to set this up). There is more information about our billing in our Terms Of Service. There are other payment options for large volume customers, so ask for other alternatives if you have more than a few thousand checks.

Can you add a check for [some other service we don't do yet]?

Yes, we can. Please let us know what would be useful. We also offer custom development services. We can build exactly what you need.

Do you have an API?

Yes, we have an HTTP accessible RESTful API. See our Documentation for more information.

Do you have features for resellers, rebranding, or licensing of your code?

We have a number of features aimed at making resellers and providers lives easier. These include separate subaccounts that are easily managed from your own login, branded notifications, and a powerful API for integration with your own provisioning systems. Our AGENT and PUSH checks handle on-premise monitoring needs well.

Do you offer on-premise monitoring?

Yes! We have two solutions for on-premise monitoring to monitor private networks and local resources. You can install our AGENT on a box on your network, and then assign most of our standard check types to be monitored from your network. The AGENT makes a connection out, rather than requiring our probes to be able to reach addresses in your private network. PUSH checks allow you to send arbitrary custom metrics from your machines to our system, which is great for measuring resources for which we don't have a check, including things like disk space, load and memory usage. Like AGENTS, PUSH checks connect out to our systems, and so you do not need to allow our probes access from the Internet.

What tech is this service based on?

Basically, lots of Javascript and JSON. Node.js, CouchDB, Redis and Cassandra. The web app is Node.js. The checks are all run on probes with Node.js and a distributed architecture communicating via websockets. The async IO provided by Node.js is what allows us to run gobs (that's a technical term) of checks per server.

If you have any questions, get in touch at support@nodeping.com, or use our Contact form.